Tooltips and context menus are used in numerous software applications. Tooltips are nuggets of information that help users familiarize themselves with features of a software application without needing to read a user manual or access web-based help. For instance, if a user hovers his or her mouse over a toolbar's button, it displays a tooltip as a brief textual description of that button's function. Context menus give users access to frequently-used menu commands that relate to the operation of the context in which the user works. Often, a context menu is associated with a control to target its menu more specifically to the user's needs. In this manner, context menus can save steps for the user by displaying menus without having to click on menu and submenu selections. Context menus can be displayed when the user presses a single key or combination of keys on a keyboard. For example, in MICROSOFT® Office Word, right-clicking, or holding down the Shift key while pressing F10 displays menu selections pertaining to ways that text can be formatted.
Current technologies such as MICROSOFT® VISUAL BASIC® allow developers to design part of the user interface for a software program simply by dragging and dropping controls, such as buttons and dialog boxes, onto a form. Then developers define each control's appearance and behavior. Developers cannot implement a tooltip or context menu for a control unless the control contains a property or pre-defined field to support a context menu or tooltip. For controls that do not have these built-in properties for tooltips and context menus, developers must manually write code for listening for events, creating a context menu or tooltip control when the specified event occurs, and displaying the content. This is time consuming.
Further limitations of current technologies permit context menus and tooltips to exist only for certain controls on status bars, menu bars, and user interfaces. Furthermore, displayed content is limited to text in a box. The sum of all these limitations requires developers to spend significant time coding context menus and tooltips.